The resistance in Lüzerath continues three days after the start of their eviction
Two of the last environmental activists who oppose the demolition of a town in Germany for the expansion of an open-cast coal mine are resisting underground. The Police recognized today that two young environmentalists have made themselves strong in a gallery dug four meters deep under the small town of Lüzerath, in the federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia, while the rest of the protesters have been expelled from the population in an eviction operation that began last Wednesday. Several attempts to force the two ‘miners’ to break out of their confinement and come to the surface have so far failed. The German THW emergency technical service, specialized in rescues in difficult places, gave up and abandoned an operation last morning to get the two activists to stop their attitude.
“They currently represent the greatest challenge” in the eviction operation, acknowledged a police spokesman, who stressed that the form of protest of the two activists carries its risks, since the stability of the excavated gallery is unknown and if the oxygen supply is enough. The two activists are in permanent contact with the Police, who have sent them radio transmitters to facilitate communication. A spokeswoman for the ‘Lüzerath lives’ movement, the organization of the protests to prevent the small town from being devastated, assured that the two young people have acted consciously and are prepared to resist at least until this Saturday, when the celebration of a large environmental demonstration against open-pit coal mining in the region in which the Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg is scheduled to participate, who made a brief surprise visit to the already half-demolished town on Friday.
The young Swedish woman went to Lüzerath accompanied by Luisa Neubauer, leader of the German youth movement ‘Fridays for Future’, with whom she was able to walk among the ruins of the town. Before the television cameras of numerous chains, she showed a sign with the text ‘Keep it in the ground’ (‘leave it underground’, in reference to coal) and she posed at the edge of the huge open-cast excavation. «When governments and corporations destroy the environment, people plant resistance. Tomorrow we will meet again to show our support for the activists.” After admitting that the police eviction operation has been faster than expected, the spokesperson for the ‘Lüzerath lives’ movement warned that there will be a clear response to the eviction of the small town by climate activists.
“They take the town from us, we will take the open-pit mine from them,” said the spokeswoman, to comment later that the police forces are not prepared to arrest the thousands of people who are expected to participate in tomorrow’s demonstration if they decide to to invade en masse “the biggest filth hole in Europe”, in reference to the land where the energy company RWE extracts coal. Meanwhile, another small group of participants in the protest against the demolition of Lützerath, no more than 20 people, also resisted on the roof of the last occupied house and on several buildings raised on trees that are besieged by riot police. At the same time, several bulldozers proceed to demolish the remaining buildings and the temporary constructions erected by the protesters to leave the town devastated as soon as possible. There is no demolition activity, however, near the hole that leads to the underground gallery in which the two young men have fortified for fear of causing landslides or landslides that could threaten their lives.
More than a thousand policemen
More than a thousand riot police officers have been participating for three days in the operation to evict the small town, where 19 people lived until a year ago and which was empty at the start of the protests. Some 400 activists have been evicted so far, most of them after voluntarily giving up their attitude, although a part of them was forcibly removed. The interior minister of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, Herbert Reul, expressed hope that the young Greta Thunberg would contribute to de-escalating the situation in Lüzerath and around the Garzweiler open pit mine. “In North Rhine-Westphalia, everyone is allowed to demonstrate, including Miss Thunberg who has come from abroad. I hope she sees to it that the activists stay peaceful and that they abide by the rules,” Reul said.
Meanwhile, more than two thousand members of the Greens party have demanded an end to the eviction operation in an open letter addressed to their co-religionists Mona Neubauer, Minister of Economy in the Düsseldorf Government, and Robert Habeck, head of the same portfolio. in the Federal Executive. Entitled ‘Do not betray fundamental green values: Lüzerath must be preserved’, it stresses that “the agreement reached in autumn with the energy company RWE threatens to destroy the foundations of our party”, in reference to the pact signed by the consortium with the governments of Berlin and Düsseldorf to demolish Lüzerath and excavate the coal from its subsoil in exchange for saving five other towns in the region and bringing forward to 2030, eight years ahead of schedule, the end of mining exploitation. The signatories of the letter accuse the two politicians of “attacking the Paris climate agreement and the agreement of the tripartite government in Berlin”, as well as losing “the last trust of the climate justice movement.”
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